by E. F. Benson
Archie took down his sail, anchored the Amphitrite, and punted himself across in a small boat to the landing-stage at the foot of the hill on which the Castello stood. Here the trees stood untroubled by the gale that poured high over them from the south, though on the other side of the harbour the wind roared in the olives, and turned their green to the grey of the underleaf, and the great surges beat and burst on the rocks he had narrowly avoided. But here that tumultuous stir was unfelt, and the resinous smell of pines and the clean odour of the eucalyptus-trees hung in the warm and sheltered air. Out of that denser shade he passed into the belt of olives that grew higher on the slope, mixed with angled and contorted fig-trees, where the fruit was already beginning to swell and ripen. Above rose the great grey bastion of the retaining fortress wall, tufted with stone-crop and valerian that was rooted in the crevices, and above that again was spread the umbrella of the stone-pine that grew at the corner of the garden. The path he followed wound round the base of this wall and passed below its easterly side, where he came into the blast of the warm south wind again that swept along the face of the Castello, and made the cypresses bend and buckle like fishing-rods which feel the jerk and pull of some hooked giant of the waters. The hillside here plunged very precipitously downwards to the bay three hundred feet below, wrinkled with waves, and feathered with foam, and, lover of the sea though he was, he felt content to observe that tumult of windy water. Not a sail was visible right across to the farther shore of the gulf, and to-night there would be no illumination of the fishing-boats that in calm weather rode out there, twinkling and populous as a town. But he stood looking at the sea a moment before he turned into the narrow stone passage that led to the gate of the house, as a man may look with love on his horse that, unruly and obstreperous, has yet carried him so gallantly.
A girl came up the cobbled way from the town just as he turned in. She had on a very simple linen dress that the wind blew close to her body, and a flapping linen sunbonnet, tied below her chin, to prevent the wind capturing it. She was tall and slight, moved easily, as with a boyish carelessness; a very pleasant face, also boyish and quite plain, peered from under her flapping bonnet. Her hands were noticeable: they were large but extremely well shaped, and the fingers showed both perception and efficiency. It may be remarked that Archie had never noticed her hands at all.
“Hullo, Jess,” said he. “I’m just back. Lord, I’ve had such a ripping afternoon. And the cigarettes are quite dry. Where have you been?”
“Just down into Silorno. Cousin Marion wanted a telegram sent about their sleeping-berths to-morrow.”
Archie frowned. He had noticed that Jessie was often sent on errands. People who can absolutely be relied on usually are.
“I should have thought my mother might have sent Pasqualino,” he observed.
The girl laughed.
“Oh, she wanted to, but I said I would go instead. You see, Cousin Marion and Helena were getting in what might be called rather a state about you. I tried to infect them with my own calm, but they wouldn’t catch it. So I thought a little walk would be pleasant.”
“Oh, was Helena frightened?” asked Archie rather greedily.
“Yes. So was Cousin Marion. I wasn’t.”
“Then you were beastly unsympathetic. I had an awful shave getting into the harbour,” remarked Archie.
“But you knew what you were about, and I didn’t, nor did Helena. So I preferred to have confidence in you and go for a walk, rather than observe you in what looked remarkably like danger.”
Archie had walked up from the landing-stage with his shoes and his coat under his arm. The coat was too wet to put on, so he dusted his feet with it, and resumed his shoes.
“Oh, a ripping afternoon,” he said again.
The sound of the clanging gate into the Castello was heard out in the garden, and as they walked up the dim stone-flagged passage that led out into it, another girl came running in. She, like her sister, was tall and slight, but there the resemblance altogether ended. A delicate, small-featured face, entirely feminine, gleamed below yellow hair; her eyes, set rather wide apart, giving her an adorably childish look, opened very widely below their dark eyelashes. Beside her, Jessie looked somewhat like a well-bred plough-boy.
“Oh, Archie!” she cried. “How horribly rash of you! Your mother and I have had a terrible half-hour.”
“I bring you cigarettes to soothe your disordered nerves,” said Archie sententiously. “I am happy to say that they are dry, though I am not.”
Jessie had walked on, with that pleasant expression on her face that might or might not be a smile, and the two were left alone for a moment.
“As if I cared about the cigarettes,” she said.
“You did this morning. But you weren’t really anxious, were you?”
“Indeed I was. You were naughty to sail back in this gale. Do be good now and change your clothes at once. I will bring you some fresh tea into the garden. Cousin Marion and I have had tea. We drank cup after cup to fortify ourselves, and looked over the wall at your boat between each sip. Then we trembled and had another sip. Before you got past that horrid rock, we had drained the teapot and broken our chairs with our tremblings.”
The strict veracity of this entertaining summary did not of course concern Archie; it was sufficient that it had Helena’s light and picturesque touch. It made a tableau that caused him to smile to himself as he changed his shirt, that was now stiffening with salt, and put on a pair of socks over his tanned feet. All this he did hurriedly, for it was the last evening, so he told himself, that they would all be together, by which he really meant that it was the last evening on which Helena would be here, since to-morrow, at break of dawn, she and his mother would start for England, leaving Jessie, Harry Travers, and himself to follow after another fortnight. When, a week before, that scheme had been suggested, it seemed to Archie the most admirable of plans, since, though his mother and Helena would be gone, he would secure another fortnight of intercourse with his beloved sea instead of inhabiting that smoky cave known as London. But since then Helena had begun to dawn on him, though as yet it would be an exaggeration to say that he was in love with her. But she was dawning, her light illuminated the sky above the horizon, and, if the plan was to be suggested again to him in his present attitude of attracted expectancy, it is probable that he would have voted for London and Helena, rather than an extension of his days at the Castello.
The scheme had originally been Helena’s, and, like all her plans, had been exceedingly well thought out, before it was produced in the guise of an impulse, prompted by kindliness and thought for others. It was, when edited as an impulse, of the simplest and most considerate sort. The hot weather did not really suit Cousin Marion, so why should not Cousin Marion go back to England with herself, Helena, as travelling companion? Of course Silorno was the most delicious place, and she would be ever so sorry to go, but certainly Cousin Marion felt the heat, and, though she was far too unselfish to suggest breaking up the party, she would be glad to go northwards earlier than the end of June, when her two months’ tenancy expired.
Helena had produced this plan to Archie one morning as they sat after breakfast under the stone-pine.
“But my mother would not in the least mind going home alone, if she preferred to go before the end of June,” he said.
Helena shook her head.
“Oh, I know she would say she didn’t mind,” she said, “or she would stop on in spite of her headaches sooner than break up the party—”
“Has she been having headaches?” asked Archie.
“Yes, but you mustn’t know that. She told me not to tell any one,” said Helena, with complete self-possession. “Promise, Archie.”
“All right.”
Helena felt quite safe now.
“So she must go back sooner than at the end of June,” she continued, “and clearly I am the right person to go with her, for she hates travelling alone.”
“Oh, we’ll all g
o then,” said Archie.
“It isn’t the least necessary. Jessie or I must go with her, for she certainly wouldn’t hear of your going, and Jessie is enjoying this so much that I couldn’t bear that she should have her days here cut short. So it’s for me to go.”
“That’s awfully good of you,” said he, only as yet half convinced.
“It isn’t the least. It’s a necessity, though you are so kind as to make a virtue of it. And then there’s this as well. Cousin Marion would never consent to go, if she thought it was for her sake that I was going with her. So you must go to her, and say you think that it’s me whom the heat doesn’t suit, and you will see if she doesn’t say at once that she will go back with me. And the real reason for her going will be our secret, just yours and mine.”
Archie looked at her for a moment in silence, and the silence was one of unspoken admiration. Somehow this kindly thoughtful plan kindled his appreciation of her beauty: her beauty took on a tenderer and more touching look. Before now, it had vaguely occurred to him that, of the two sisters, it was Jessie who most gave up her own way to serve the ways of others; but this secret of Helena’s made him feel that he had done her an injustice.
“But I don’t want you to give up your time here if you enjoy it,” he said.
“Ah, don’t make me tell a fib, and say that I don’t enjoy it,” she said. “I will if you press me. I’ll say it bores me frightfully, sooner than give up my plan.”
“Well, I think it’s wonderfully kind of you,” he said. “Now I’m to tell my mother that you are feeling the heat, and see what she says. Is that it?”
“Yes, just that,” said Helena.
Archie had strolled indoors to put this plan to the test, and before he returned a quarter of an hour later with his mother Helena had approved of her own ingenuity very warmly. She had, if her scheme succeeded, secured for herself an additional fortnight of the London season, for she and Jessie were, for the present, going to make their home with their cousins and she was already satisfied that her unselfishness had made a considerable impression on Archie. This was the most important thing: hitherto she felt she had failed to make her mark, so to speak. He was on excellent friendly terms with her, just as he was with Jessie, but she wanted (or at any rate wished for) something more than that. It was not that she wanted him to flirt with her; she had much more serious ends in view. She wanted (and here was her perspicacity) to dazzle his eyes by means of touching his heart, for she guessed, with clear-sighted vision, that he was the kind of young man who, if he did not mean everything, would mean nothing, and she believed that she could not entangle his affection by mere superficial appeals. And, indeed, she was not a flirt herself; she was poor, and clever, and attractive, and she proposed to use her cleverness and attraction in the legitimate pursuit of securing a husband who was not poor. That Archie was now Lord Davidstow, and at his father’s death would be Lord Tintagel, was in his favour, and to make an impression on him, and then to go self-sacrificingly away, seemed to her a very promising manoeuvre. She was not in the least afraid of leaving Jessie with him, for, with her habitual adroitness, she had conveyed to her sister, by little sighs, glances, and words that seemed to escape from her lips unawares, what her design (yet without making it appear a design) on Archie was. She had but allowed her feelings, all unconsciously, to betray themselves, as when she said “Darling, wouldn’t it be lovely to be Archie’s sister, instead of only cousin?” That put it quite plainly enough, and she felt sure that Jessie understood. And, in addition to this impregnable safeguard of Jessie’s loyalty, she was satisfied that Jessie’s friendliness with Archie was of the most unsentimental character. Indeed, to speak of her sense of security with regard to Jessie would be a labouring of the point: she was so secure that her security scarcely struck her, any more than the security of a house consciously strikes its inhabitant.
* * * * *
The week that had passed between the acceptance of her plan and this, the last night of her stay at Silorno, confirmed the soundness of her strategy. Archie’s frank friendliness towards herself had undergone a subtle change, while his relations with her sister remained precisely on the same calm tableland of comradeship. But below his comradeship with herself, like the sun glowing faintly through a mist without heat at present, but with penetration of light, she knew that there was growing an emotional brightness. It was with light and with a nameless quickening that his eye dwelt on her, and now as they sat in the deep dusk of the garden, illumined only by the stars that twinkled like minute golden oranges in the boughs of the stone-pine, she knew that he was looking at the pale wraith of her face, which was all the starlight left her with, in a manner that was not yet a week old. It was so dark, here in the deep shade, that she saw nothing of his sun-tanned face beyond a featureless oval, but when, from time to time, he drew on his cigarette, it leaped into distinctness. There was emotion there, or, at any rate, the stuff from which emotion is made; there was need, not yet wholly conscious of itself, but waiting, like buried treasure, to be released.
And on her side, also, something was astir behind her calculated plan. She felt sorry, until the wisdom of her project laid its calming hand upon her again, that she was being so unselfish as to accompany Cousin Marion back to town. It would have been extraordinarily pleasant to sit here many times more with Archie, and both watch and take part in the growth of the situation of which the seed had been deliberately planted by herself. It was but a weak little spike as yet, but undeniably there was the potentiality of growth in it.
Suddenly his face leapt into light, as he struck a match, and the gain of a fortnight’s London season seemed to her insignificant. And the success of her plan, the wisdom of which she still endorsed, was but a frigid triumph, for she felt to a degree yet unknown to her his personal charm.
“Oh, Archie, I wish I wasn’t going away,” she said. “It has been a nice time. I wish — no, I suppose that’s selfish of me.”
“I want to know what is selfish of you,” said he.
“Do you? Well, as it’s our last evening you shall. I wish I thought you would miss me more.”
He moved just a shade closer to her.
“Oh, I shall miss you quite enough,” he said.
She laughed.
“I don’t think you will,” she said. “You’ll have your bathing and your boating and your writing. I expect you will have a very jolly time.”
He seemed to think over this.
“Yes, I shall have all those things,” he said. “And I like them. Why shouldn’t I? But — no, like you, I won’t say that.”
“But I did,” she remarked.
“Well, I will too. I shall miss you much more than I should have missed you if you had gone away a week ago.”
She, too, hesitated a moment. Then very coolly she replied:
“Thank you very much.”
There was calculation in that: she had thought over her polite, chilly manner swiftly but carefully. And she had calculated rightly. He chucked away the cigarette he had only just lit.
“Helena, have I offended you?” he asked. “Why do you speak like that?”
Again she traversed a second’s swift thought.
“Of course you haven’t offended me,” she said lightly. “You’ll have to try harder than that if you want to offend me. My dear, do try again. Try to make me feel hurt.”
Archie was a little excited. There was some small intimate contest going on, that affected him physically, with secret delight, just as he was affected in his limbs by some cross-current to the direction of his swimming, or in his brain by the tussle for the word he wanted when he was writing. He was sparring with something dear to him.
“Try to hurt me,” she said softly.
“Very well,” said he. “I’m glad you’re going away to-morrow. Will that do?”
She laughed again.
“It would do excellently well if you meant it,” she said. “But you don’t mean it.”
“You�
�re very hard to please,” said he.
“Not in the least. If you want to please me, say that you’ll be very glad to see me again in a few weeks.”
“I certainly shall, but I shan’t say it. You know it quite well enough without my assurance.”
She leaned forward a little.
“But say it all the same, Archie,” she said. “Say it quite out loud.”
Archie threw back his head and shouted at the stone-pine.
“I shall be very glad to see you again in — what was it? — in a few weeks,” he cried.
“Ah, that is nice of you. No, I’m not sure that it’s nice, because you’ve brought Jessie and Mr. Harry out into the garden.”